BANGLADESH

The government on Tuesday rolled out Tk 350 million worth of incentives in seeds and fertiliser for 355,000 small and marginal farmers of 56 districts to promote Aush production.

Under the package, each farmer will get 8 kg of seed of Nerica – the New Rice For Africa, a high yielding variety – or 5 kg of Ufsi homegrown hybrid seeds and 36 kg fertiliser –16 kg of urea, 10 kg of Diammonium Phosphate and 10 kg of muriate of potash (MoP) for one bigha of land.

Agriculture minister Matia Chowdhury announced the incentives at a press briefing in Dhaka.

She said the government set a target to cultivate Aush paddy on nearly 48,966 hectares of land in 56 districts in the current financial year. The production target is at 2.5 million metric tonnes which was 2.33 metric tonnes last year.

The minister said the programme will also require around 1890 tonnes of seeds, 5685 tonnes urea and 7106 tonnes of non-urea fertilisers like DAP and MoP.

She was hopeful that the slew of incentives would help to raise additional Aush output by 120,000 tonnes.

The total area for Aush cultivation has been fixed at 1.15 million hectares during this year, which was 1.13 million hectares in 2011.

The government provided incentives worth Tk 349.3 million for the first time in 2011 which had helped an additional 100,000 tonnes of rice in the past year.

Agriculture secretary Manzur Hossain and high officials of Bangladesh Agricultural Development Corporation (BADC) and the Department of Agricultural Extension (DAE) were present at the briefing